Analyzing our favorite scenes from House of the Dragon

Aemond chases Lucerys: Episode 10. “The Black Queen”

In a particularly stormy day, Lucerys rides his dragon Arrax to Storm’s End in order to give Lord Borros Baratheon a message from his mother. When he arrives, he notices the enormous dragon Vhagar sitting on the other side of the Keep, waiting in the storm. When Lucerys enters the keep, he sees Aemond Targaryen is already there, and learns that he has already made a pact with House Baratheon.

Aemond tell Lucerys he wants his eye as payment for when Luke slashed out Aemond’s eye back when they were kids. (Hadn’t Aemond already come to terms with the fact he lost an eye but gained a dragon years ago? Alexa, play “Let it Go.”) Lucerys insists that he will not give him his eye and that he won’t fight him, and Lord Borros Baratheon demands there be no fighting in his hall. He has his men escort Lucerys back to Arrax and the pair fly off.

Aemond follows on Vhagar. That was a mistake. Arrax is a very young dragon, and he feels threatened. He attacks Vhagar by breathing fire on her face, even though Lucerys tells him to stop. Vhagar, who is clearly angry at this point, turns to chase them. Aemond pleads with Vhagar to listen, but it’s too late. Vhagar tears Lucerys and Arrax to pieces in midair. The look on Aemond’s face is priceless.

Did show Aemond mean to kill his nephew? I honestly don’t think so. I think he wanted to scare Lucerys, maybe rough him up a bit, and took it a step too far. He will have a lot of explaining to do when he gets back to King’s Landing. And the consequences will be brutal.

While reading Fire & Blood, I always considered Aemond one of my favorite characters. Watching actor Ewan Mitchell, I feel the same way about him on House of the Dragon. That being said, there are a few key differences between what happens with Aemond on TV and what we are told on the page.

Remember: Fire & Blood is a fake “history” book cobbled together based on the accounts of multiple unreliable narrators. In the book, we hear that Aemond purposely killed Lucerys; one account even says that he found the corpse afterward and cut out his eye, giving it to his mother as a gift. In the show, what seems to begin as a chase meant to only scare his nephew turns into an accidental murder as we see the dragons acting on their own.

One of the wisest things Viserys says in the show is, “thinking that we control the dragons is an illusion.” The show builds on that line and shows us a possibility that the narrators from Fire & Blood never considered: that Arrax and Vhagar did not listen to their riders, and that their clash led to Lucerys and Arrax’s deaths.

And those are some of my favorite moments from House of the Dragon season 1. Having read Fire & Blood, I can only excitedly wait for what’s to come and hope to continue being pleasantly surprised at how the showrunners are adapting George R. R. Martin’s phenomenal work.

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